Improving Patient Care While Decreasing Costs: The Benefits, Barriers, and Student Perspectives on Nurse Residency Programs
Glenn Javelona
Yaira Kurtzman
Many professions have long since realized that a vast divide exists between the classroom and real-world practice and, thus, have mandated transitional programs. Nursing lacks such an intermediate step as part of its professional training although new nurses are pressured to provide both safe and competent care to increasingly complex patients without any transitional support (Pittman, Herrera, Bass, & Thompson, 2013). To fill this gap many institutions have begun to implement their own nurse-residency programs [NRPs]. However, since not all institutions have introduced such transition-into-practice programs barriers must exist. Nationwide, NRPs are shrouded in confusion, false perceptions, and concerns that hinder their implementation. This manuscript was compiled to help shed light onto the reasons for the lack of implementation and provides evidence of the importance and overall benefits for such programs. Personal perspectives are also provided from the authors in order to gain a nursing-student perspective about these transitional programs.

The Reality of Diabetes in Rural Mexico: A Nursing Student Perspective
Hillary E. Handler
Suzanne M. Le
Markita A. Balfour
Maria de la Luz Bonilla
Sebastiana del Rosario Gargantua Aguila
Karen A. Monsen
Students from six universities in Canada, Mexico, and the USA participated in a service learning exchange. In order to understand the needs of diabetes patients in rural Mexico three students from Canada and the USA trudged in the heat through the rough terrain to their homes. We used Omaha System signs/symptoms to collect interview data. The standardized language of the questionnaire allowed us to be aware of the interaction between traditional medical beliefs and the western medical model. Some of these challenges include maintaining the traditional family roles, controlling blood glucose levels without the appropriate medical equipment, and economic barriers. One patient was responsible for both caring for her eight young children and working in the fields to put food on the table. Additionally, she was in a constant hypoglycemic state causing her to faint in the fields. We also visited a visually impaired man that was distraught because he needed to rely on others for help in a machismo society. He said “While living in New York City, I was a victim of a robbery. I was so afraid because I thought I was going to die and as a result I got diabetes.” Though some may find this comment strange, it is a common theory among the rural population in Mexico. We will always remember the many Mexican speculate that eating bread absorbs the scare and thus prevents diabetes. This experience gave us a glimpse of the harsh reality that these people face everyday coping with diabetes.